The Truth (6 page)
Latham walked towards the window, stirring his coffee.
‘He isn’t government, he isn’t UN. He’s not a bureaucrat or a politician. He’s never accepted an honour or a medal. He’s one of the last of an almost extinct species – the free spirit, the lone wolf. The guy who does what he thinks is right and argues about it afterwards. He’s an inspiration to some, a bloody nuisance to others. Yet the real Hamish Melville is a mystery. We know jackshit about the man himself. How he lives, works, operates. What he really wants to achieve. That’s the gap we want to fill.’
Latham turned and looked at Mabbut.
‘And?’
‘And we want you to fill it.’
This was so completely not what he’d expected that at first Mabbut could come up with no reaction at all. He needed a moment to decode the complex mix of excitement and unease that had suddenly come over him.
‘
Me?
’ Aware that his voice sounded shrill, he paused and came down an octave. ‘I mean, why me?’
‘As you can imagine, Melville isn’t the sort of man for a celebrity biog or a memoir. He’d run a mile from a star performer. He’d sniff out anyone with an agenda. It’s happened before. Good journalists, top writers have tried to get close and failed miserably.’
‘So why would I be different?’ asked Mabbut.
Latham moved towards him. He was talking faster now, like someone homing in on a target.
‘Silla’s filled me in on you, Mabbut, and I hope you won’t mind me saying this, but you don’t carry any intimidating baggage with you. You’re not a celebrity, your name is hardly a household word. Your . . .’ His brow furrowed momentarily. ‘Your record is solid but
unspectacular. Even, possibly, a little dull. But you can write. She’s shown me your stuff and it’s fine.’
Somewhere behind him, Mabbut heard his agent clear her throat. Latham continued.
‘You’ve been a journalist. You know about deadlines. You know about sources. And environment is your thing. You exposed that water company. You’re used to working under the radar. But most of all, Priscilla tells me you’re basically an honest man, a straight guy. Someone we could depend on.’
Keith stole a glance at Silla. She smiled back. But he wanted more than that. Some guidance, for God’s sake, as to how he should be dealing with all this.
Latham pulled out a chair and sat down close to Mabbut.
‘We’ll make it worth your while, of course.’
Mabbut felt claustrophobic. He didn’t like this place, he didn’t like this man, and he had been in the business long enough to know that publishing houses were not charities.
‘But we’re not a charity, Mr Mabbut. Your part of the deal is to produce the book, start to finish, in six months flat.’
Mabbut felt a rising panic.
‘I’m writing a novel . . .’
‘The company wants this to be one of our lead titles for next Christmas, so I need it by April at the latest. For legal checks, rights sales and so on. And I will need complete confidentiality. If anyone asks, you’re writing an overview of environmental movements.’
‘But I’m writing a novel,’ Mabbut repeated.
Latham leant closer to him.
‘What’s really important is that you look at every aspect of the man. I mean
every
aspect. We don’t want a fanzine, Mabbut. We want the truth.’
Latham stood. He repositioned his chair carefully at the table. A martinet, thought Mabbut, not bright but neat. Likes things just so.
‘Silla and I can discuss the details.’
Ron Latham extended his hand to Mabbut, and they made their way to the door.
‘Good to meet you, Keith.’
Mabbut wanted to get his thoughts in order, to express clearly and
unequivocally what his position was, but he couldn’t think how to do it. Nor, it seemed, was he going to be given the opportunity. He gave a last, instinctive look towards Silla. She nodded back eagerly.
‘Call you,’ she said, half standing and motioning towards the exit.
Latham was already at the door, holding it open for him.
‘I hope you’re as excited as we are.’
T
he glass doors of the Urgent building quietly slid shut behind him. Mabbut stood in the small brick plaza. Around him office workers were occupying the steps and unpacking lunches. He felt confused. Out of place. A purposeless man in a purposeful world. He turned left, then right, heading instinctively towards the river. When he reached Bankside he picked his way through the cross-current of ambling tourists and keen-eyed joggers and found the reassurance of a bulky granite wall. He leant out over the parapet and looked at the river. It was high tide and a stiff breeze was sloshing the water about. The horn of a passing barge blasted out, like an elephant in pain.
Mabbut stared across the river, his eyes moving east to west across the oddly assorted clumps of buildings that made up the north bank. Hardly welcoming. The towers of the City held their own secrets. The ivy-clad walls of the Inns of Court protected their inmates from curious glances. The smooth stone bulk of the Ministry of Defence and the carved and curlicued Houses of Parliament, accessible only by special pass, took up another half-mile of London’s private riverside.
A pair of runners thudded by behind him.
Cities, he thought, especially capitals, give the impression of being open and busy and full of people going here, there and everywhere, but at heart they’re closed, conspiratorial places. He knew this because at one time it had been his job to prise out information from behind the high walls, to infiltrate the defences of impenetrable institutions and find someone somewhere who was accountable. At one stage his zeal had been ambitious, almost evangelical, until he overstepped the mark. Called powerful people liars, paid informers inside the company, showed that good, decent people with families,
friends and Masonic colleagues had been prepared to tolerate bad practice rather than frighten their shareholders.
As far as Mabbut was concerned his ends had always justified his means. Looking back now, the award he’d won for the water story probably hadn’t helped. It had stirred envies, made him look smug and self-righteous in some people’s eyes. It certainly made people close ranks against him. But he had been a good journalist, that was for sure, and he had bitterly resented having to make do with crumbs: corporate vanity projects, official histories, publicity puffs of one kind or another. Writing a book about Hamish Melville sounded too good to be true, and that was what worried him. Why would a sleek, smooth, plausible man like Ron Latham have any interest in an iconoclast such as Melville? And the other thing that really rankled was the way the two of them, especially his own fucking agent, for God’s sake, had dismissed the novel. Well, he’d prove them wrong.
Albana
distilled what he had wanted to say for so long. In
Albana
the big issues would take centre stage, and the piffling cover-ups and compromises of modern life would be put firmly in their place. It would be a big story on a big canvas. Universal and compassionate. Saying everything he wanted to say. No compromise needed.
His phone rang. Silla sounded breathless. She was obviously on the move.
‘Where are you?’
‘I just took a walk, along the river.’
‘Good news. Ron likes you.’
‘How could you tell?’
‘What?’
‘How can you tell what a robot thinks?’
‘Don’t be frivolous. All I’ve got to do now is iron out a few contract details, and I’m pretty sure you’ve got the job!’
‘Silla, Silla. Slow down. Who says I
want
the job?’
There was a pause on the other end of the line.
‘What d’you mean? What else are you going to do?’
‘I have a novel to write!’
‘Your science fiction thing?’
Mabbut aimed a kick at the wall. ‘It’s
not
science fiction, it’s historical re-creation. Documentary drama.’
‘But it’s still fiction. This is for real, Keith. And, what’s more, I think I can get you real money for it!’
Mabbut looked down. At his feet, a pigeon, quite oblivious to the passing crowds, was worrying away at a stub of discarded falafel.
‘Silla, I told you what I want to do now. You may not have listened, but I did tell you. I don’t want to be a hired gun any more. I have my own plans and I’ve taken the decision to concentrate all my time on my novel. This is the only way I will ever produce anything of my own. If Urgent like me that much then let’s talk to them about
Albana
. An advance wouldn’t hurt.’
Somewhere in the background he heard Hector’s raised voice. Silla giving instructions. A door slamming. Then her voice, again, a little muffled at first.
‘Keith, are you still there?’
‘I’m here.’
‘There is no way that I am going to get a penny for a science fiction story.’
‘It’s not—’
‘But if I can get what I think I can get for the Melville book, you can write whatever you like for the rest of your life.
Shit!
’
He heard a squeal of brakes, the blast of a horn and a cry of anger.
‘Sorry. Red light. Man in front being pedantic. Look, I’m your agent, Keith. My job is to get you work. And believe me, that has not always been easy. Now I’m just inches away from the best deal I’ve ever got for you, and I am not going to walk away from it. I took you on because I knew you were good. This is your chance to prove it. There is no “either or” here. This is a great deal. Trust me.’
The phone went dead. Mabbut slipped it into his pocket, pulled up the collar of his coat and set off in the direction of London Bridge station.
When he got home, Mabbut checked for phone messages. There were none. He made himself a plate of toast and a cup of coffee, which he carried back up to his study. Having put down a bowl of fresh water for Stanley and wondered, not for the first time, if his cat might be hydrophiliac, Mabbut settled at the keyboard and, adjusting his chair to Position Three – straight back, forward tilt – he set to
work detailing the physical appearance of Albana, the world that would confront the first men as they emerged on to the wide and windswept plateau on which their lives would be played out. He enjoyed conjuring up the vista of hard limestone stacks, crumbling gullies and wind-worn cliffs still bearing the scars of some mighty eruption.
For at least twenty minutes the images spilled as fluently into his mind as if he were describing the walks he used to take with his father round Ingleborough and Malham Tarn. Then he realised that he was indeed describing the walks he took round Ingleborough and Malham Tarn and not south-eastern Turkey, where his story was putatively set. Rather than delete everything he’d just written Mabbut reasoned that there might have been a time when south-eastern Turkey could well have resembled Ingleborough and Malham Tarn, and in any case, who would know? There was one further problem. When at last he came to name this great forbidding wasteland, his original thought of calling it Da-Naa sounded all wrong. Like a holiday beach in Thailand. What he needed was something with more resonance, something both epic and evil. Mordor had just the right ring to it. Which was probably why Tolkien had come up with it in the first place.
Once Tolkien had come into his mind, Mabbut froze up completely. Middle Earth was a no-go area for him. That way fantasy lay, and he simply mustn’t let himself be led down that insidious path. All right, there were similarities between his vision and Tolkien’s, but Tolkien was old hat.
Albana
was certainly about the struggle between good and evil, oppression and independence, but it was about so much more besides. After some thought he rechristened the wilderness Uyea, and hoped that no one would know it was one of the Shetland Islands.
It was late afternoon when he finally admitted defeat. He rubbed his eyes and stared out of the window, which needed a clean. He was letting the house go. Krys would never have allowed it to get this far. He stood up, stretched and looked down at his work. This time yesterday morning, he was embarking on something strange and unpredictable, but at least it was a work of fiction. Thirty-six hours later what was strange and unpredictable was his own life. His wife
had a man, his daughter had an Iranian refugee and he had an offer to write a Christmas book about a living legend. Yesterday’s certainties had become today’s confusions. What he needed was someone to talk to.
He wanted to ring Krystyna, but that would involve all the other stuff. The same with Jay. Sam would be at the theatre. He could suggest a late supper, build a few bridges. Yes, that was an idea. Father asks son for advice. A way to start talking again. He took out his phone and scrolled through the names. Then he stopped, scrolled forward, and after the briefest of hesitations, pressed once and pressed again.
‘Hello, Tess.’
T
essa was Mabbut’s secret. And as far as he knew, he was hers. They’d met on a night bus about six months ago. After a noisy Irish couple had got off at Highbury Corner, they’d been the only two left upstairs. They’d smiled at one another as the noise of the raucously arguing couple receded down the stairs. Vibrating from that nanosecond of contact they’d sat there, separate but aware, as five stops went by. All the way up the Holloway Road, past the Emirates stadium, under the bridge that carried the East Coast railway line, past the Odeon cinema on one side and the Beaux-Arts building on the other, both staring straight ahead. As he stood to get off, she’d stood too. It had almost felt choreographed as he followed her downstairs, and stood waiting behind her as the stop approached, the warning signal bleeped and the doors folded open.
